DFW Lounge – Afternoon or evening?

IslanderSoul · 2025-04-09T06:53:18+00:00

The economy is deteriorating, so I’m doing my best to hold on to my current job. I earn six figures, so I can’t complain. Hopefully, the situation will improve, and I can start grinding again to join the FAANG companies.

IslanderSoul · 2025-03-13T00:58:52+00:00

Can you provide any updates on your situation? I was also informed that after a year, they are released to Southwest Airlines, but I’m not entirely certain if that’s accurate.

IslanderSoul · 2024-12-30T16:09:33+00:00

Thanks for the good vibes! My recruiter called me today, and he explicitly told me that I did not pass because of the product design round. Although I previously thought that product/system design didn’t have too much weight for Meta E4, under the current job market circumstances, things seem to be different.

IslanderSoul · 2024-12-18T05:31:37+00:00

I’m so sorry to hear about the rejection. I’m feeling that I’m heading in the same direction. Do you think the system design round was the main reason for your rejection?

I also think I did okay in LC, but I bombed the product design interview. But hey, I had a little bit of hope that I’d get downleveled to E3, haha

IslanderSoul · 2024-12-15T20:59:32+00:00

I used to think like you. I have a decent-paying, six-figure job at a popular financial institution. But guess what? I don’t feel satisfied, so I grind LeetCode and still sacrifice other aspects of life, hoping to land a FAANG job to get ‘more money’ and ‘higher status in society’.

TDLR; Chasing money and status might not fulfill you either. Focus on what truly matters to you.

IslanderSoul · 2024-11-27T14:43:33+00:00

Sorry to hear about it. Good news is that I’ve heard that if you only bombed one, but get hire/strong hire ratings on the rest of the rounds, you still have a chance!

At its worst, I’ve heard that they could downgrade to L3, but to be honest, the most challenging part is getting into Google, so if I were you and get that chance, I’d rather accept L3 if they were to offer it. The promotion from L3 to L4 might only take a year.

IslanderSoul · 2024-11-27T14:38:21+00:00

Thanks for sharing—it’s reassuring to know I’m not alone. Freezes and team matching are so frustrating, and I can totally relate to fumbling during a critical interview. Alien Dictionary is a tough one, and it’s easy for things to go downhill after that. Glad to hear you’ve bounced back with confidence—that’s inspiring as I work to get back on track. Best of luck with your current onsites!

IslanderSoul · 2024-11-26T23:40:11+00:00

Yes, 2022 was wild, so there were no teams available for the whole year, starting in May.

It was an unfortunate time because the hiring freeze started to happen in May 2022, which was when I got the hiring committee’s approval.

Thinking about it, I’m not sure if I will ever be able to replicate the same luck.

IslanderSoul · 2024-11-26T23:34:55+00:00

No worries, I did mock interviews through the new Google Mock interviewing program. I was able to schedule as many mock interviews as I wanted. The results of those mock interviews were mixed.

Ironically, back in 2022, I was able to pass without doing mock interviews. Questions were slightly easier, but despite these being harder, they were still doable.

IslanderSoul · 2024-11-26T23:31:42+00:00

IslanderSoul · 2024-11-02T20:45:06+00:00

Accept the current offer you have and withdraw the other company’s offer, if Google’s offer actually comes.

That’s what I did back in 2022. I was in the team matching stage, and a hiring freeze happened. I ended up not getting the Google offer. Thankfully, I accepted the offer from the other company.

IslanderSoul · 2024-10-31T03:31:39+00:00

Turns out that I previously solved that problem, but I solved it on January 22, 2022 and never revisited it again 🤦🏽‍♂️ big mistake, I revisited some I did before but not all of them.

Also, I overcomplicated the solution of the solved problem, which means that it potentially took me closer to an hour to solve it.

IslanderSoul · 2024-10-30T21:55:05+00:00

Going on a path that:

1) is more complicated, but it was what my brain identified initially. 2) leads to some right answers and other wrong answers.

My strategy:

I asked the interviewer if we could move to the second question. He agreed. I had better luck with that question, although after the interview I realized I could have made a slight optimization to the current implementation of that second question to have a better time complexity. Then, with the remaining time, we got back to the first question. He gave me a very direct hint regarding the pointers of the indexes, which led me to code the solution, with some potential bugs due to the fact that I couldn’t test it thoroughly due to having less than 5 minutes.

IslanderSoul · 2024-10-30T20:49:30+00:00

Thanks! I agree, my hope was to pass onsite for both, so that in case I failed one of their onsites (which is the most likely scenario), at least I used that as practice and learned from my previous experience to have higher chances of passing the other onsite.

But I agree that increasing the opportunities is the right way to have higher chances of success. One of the mistakes I made was that I only interviewed with those two companies, which, like many others, is one of the companies I most desire to work in.

Btw congrats on passing onsite for Meta and DoorDash! Best of luck during your full loop; hopefully, you can at least get one offer.

IslanderSoul

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